Chapter II: Of Happiness.

Section I. -- Of Ends.

1. EVERY human act is done for some end or
purpose. The end is always regarded by the agent
in the light of something good. If evil be done, it
is done as leading to good, or as bound up with
good, or as itself being good for the doer under
the circumstances; no man ever does evil for sheer
evil's sake. Yet evil may be the object of the will,
not by itself, nor primarily, but in a secondary way,
as bound up with the good that is willed in the
first place.

2. Many things willed are neither good nor evil
in themselves. There is no motive for doing them
except in so far as they lead to some good beyond
themselves, or to deliverance from some evil, which
deliverance counts as a good. A thing is willed,
then, either as being good in itself and an end by
itself, or as leading to some good end. Once a
thing not good and desirable by itself has been
taken up by the will as leading to good, it may be
taken up again and again without reference to its
tendency. But such a thing was not originally
taken up except in view of good to come of it. We
may will one thing as leading to another, and that
to a third, and so on; thus one wills study for
learning, learning for examination purposes,
examination for a commission in the army, and the
commission for glory. That end in which the will
rests, willing it for itself without reference to
anything beyond, is called the last end.

3. An end is either objective or subjective. The
objective end is the thing wished for, as it exists
distinct from the person who wishes it. The subjective
end is the possession of the objective end.
That possession is a fact of the wisher's own being.
Thus money may be an objective end: the corresponding
subjective end is being wealthy.

4. Is there one subjective last end to all the
human acts of a given individual? Is there one
supreme motive for all that this or that man deliberately
does? At first sight it seems that there is not.
The same individual will act now for glory, now
for lucre, now for love. But all these different
ends are reducible to one, that it may be well with
him and his. And what is true of one man here, is
true of all. All the human acts of all men are done
for the one (subjective) last end just indicated. This
end is called happiness.

5. Men place their happiness in most different
things; some in eating and drinking, some in the
heaping up of money, some in gambling, some in
political power, some in the gratification of affection,
some in reputation of one sort or another. But each
one seeks his own speciality because he thinks that
he shall be happy, that it will be well with him,
when he has attained that. All men, then, do all
things for happiness, though not all place their
happiness in the same thing.

6. Just as when one goes on a journey, he need
not think of his destination at every step of his
way, and yet all his steps are directed towards his
destination: so men do not think of happiness in
all they do, and yet all they do is referred to happiness.
Tell a traveller that this is the wrong way
to his destination, he will avoid it; convince a man
that this act will not be well for him, will not further
his happiness, and, while he keeps that conviction
principally before his eyes, he will not do the act.
But as a man who began to travel on business, may
come to make travelling itself a business, and travel
for the sake of going about; so in all cases there is
a tendency to elevate into an end that which was,
to start with, only valued as a means to an end.
So the means of happiness, by being habitually
pursued, come to be a part of happiness. Habit is
a second nature, and we indulge a habit as we gratify
nature. This tendency works itself to an evil extreme
in cases where men are become the slaves of
habit, and do a thing because they are got into the
way of doing it, though they allow that it is a sad
and sorry way, and leads them wide of true happiness.
These instances show perversion of the normal
operation of the will.

Section II. -- Definition of happiness.

1. Though all men do all things, in the last
resort, that it may be well with them and theirs,
that is, for happiness vaguely apprehended, yet when
they come to specify what happiness is, answers so
various are given and acted upon, that we might be
tempted to conclude that each man, is the measure
of his own happiness, and that no standard of happiness
for all can be defined. But it is not so. Man
is not the measure of his own happiness, any more
than of his own health. The diet that he takes to
be healthy, may prove his poison; and where he
looks for happiness, he may find the extreme of
wretchedness and woe. For man must live up to
his nature, to his bodily constitution, to be a healthy
man; and to his whole nature, but especially to his
mental and moral constitution, if he is to be a happy
man. And nature, though it admits of individual
peculiarities, is specifically the same for all. There
will, then, be one definition of happiness for all men,
specifically as such.

2. Happiness is an act, not a state. That is to say,
the happiness of man does not lie in his having
something done to him, nor in his being habitually
able to do something, but in his actually doing
something. "To be up and doing," that is happiness, --
en tô zên kai energein.
(Ar., Eth., IX., ix., 5.)
This is proved from the consideration that happiness
is the crown and perfection of human nature;
but the perfection of a thing lies in its ultimate act,
or "second act," that is, in its not merely being able
to act, but acting. But action is of two Sorts. One
proceeds from the agent to some outward matter, as
cutting and burning. This action cannot be happiness,
for it does not perfect the agent, but rather
the patient. There is another sort of act immanent
in the agent himself, as feeling, understanding, and
willing: these perfect the agent. Happiness will be
found to be one of these immanent acts. Furthermore,
there is action full of movement and change,
and there is an act done in stillness and rest. The
latter, as will presently appear, is happiness; and
partly for this reason, and partly to denote the
exclusion of care and trouble, happiness is often
spoken of as a rest. It is also called a state, because
one of the elements of happiness is permanence.
How the act of happiness can be permanent, will
appear hereafter.

3. Happiness is an act in discharge of the function
proper to man, as man. There is a function proper
to the eye, to the ear, to the various organs of the
human body: there must be a function proper to
man as such. That can be none of the functions of
the vegetative life, nor of the mere animal life within
him. Man is not happy by doing what a rose-bush
can do, digest and assimilate its food: nor by doing
what a horse does, having sensations pleasurable
and painful, and muscular feelings. Man is happy
by doing what man alone can do in this world, that
is, acting by reason and understanding. Now the
human will acting by reason may do three things.
It may regulate the passions, notably desire and
fear: the outcome will be the moral virtues of
temperance and fortitude. It may direct the understanding,
and ultimately the members of the body,
in order to the production of some practical result
in the external world, as a bridge. Lastly, it may
direct the understanding to speculate and think,
contemplate and consider, for mere contemplation's
sake. Happiness must take one or other of these
three lanes.

4. First, then, happiness is not the practice of the
moral virtues of temperance and fortitude. Temperance
makes a man strong against the temptations to
irrationality and swinishness that come of the bodily
appetites. But happiness lies, not in deliverance
from what would degrade man to the level of the
brutes, but in something which shall raise man to,
the highest level of human nature. Fortitude, again,
is not exercised except in the hour of danger but
happiness lies in an environment of security, not of
danger. And in general, the moral virtues can be
exercised only upon occasions, as they come and
go; but happiness is the light of the soul, that must
burn with steady flame and uninterrupted act, and
not be dependent on chance occurrences.

5. Secondly, happiness is not the use of the Practical
understanding with a view to production. Happiness,
is an end in itself, a terminus beyond which the act
of the will can go no further; but this use of the
understanding is in view of an ulterior end, the thing
to be produced. That product is either useful or
artistic; if useful, it ministers to some further end
still; if artistic, it ministers to contemplation.
Happiness, indeed, is no exercise of the practical
understanding whatever. The noblest exercises of
practical understanding are for military purposes
and for statesmanship. But war surely is not an
end in itself to any right-minded man. Statecraft,
too, has an end before it, the happiness of the
people. It is a labour in view of happiness. We
must follow down the third lane, and say:

6. Happiness is the act of the speculative understanding
contemplating, for contemplation's sake. This act
has all the marks of happiness. It is the highest
act of man's highest power. It is the most capable
of continuance. It is fraught with pleasure, purest
and highest in quality. It is of all acts the most
self-sufficient and independent of environment, provided
the object be to the mind's eye visible. It is
welcome for its own sake, not as leading to any
further good. It is a life of ease and leisure: man
is busy that he may come to ease.

7. Aristotle says of this life of continued active
contemplation:

"Such a life will be too good for man; for not as
he is man will he so live, but inasmuch as there is a
divine element in his composition. As much as this
element excels the compound into which it enters,
so much does the act of the said, element excel any
act in any other line of virtue. If, then, the understanding
is divine in comparison with man, the life
of the understanding is divine in comparison with
human life. We must not take the advice of those
who tell us, that being man, one should cherish the
thoughts of a man, or being mortal, the thoughts of
a mortal, but so far as in us lies, we must play the
immortal (athanatizein), and do all in our power to
live by the best element in our nature: for though
that element be slight in quantity, in power and in
value it far outweighs all the rest of our being. A
man may well be reckoned to be that which is the
ruling power and the better part in him. . . . What
is proper to each creature by nature, is best and
sweetest for each: such, then, is for man the life
of the understanding, if the understanding
preeminently is man.", (Ar., Eth., X., vii., 8, 9.)

8. But if happiness is an act in discharge of the
function proper to man as man (n. 3), how can it be
happiness to lead a life which Aristotle says is too
good for man? The solution of this paradox is
partly contained in the concluding words of Aristotle
above quoted, and will still further appear presently
(s. iv., n. 1, p. 21), where we shall argue that human
life is a state of transition in preparation for a
higher life of the soul, to be lived, according to the
natural order, when the compound of soul and body
would no longer exist.

9. The act of contemplation, in which happiness consists,
must rest upon a habit of contemplation, which is
intellectual virtue. An act, to be perfection and
happiness, must be done easily, sweetly, and constantly.
But no act of the intellect can be so done, unless it
rests upon a corresponding habit. If the habit has
not been acquired, the act will be done fitfully, at
random, and against the grain, like the music of an
untrained singer, or the composition of a schoolboy.
Painful study is not happiness, nor is any studied
act. Happiness is the play of a mind that is, if not
master of, yet at home with its subject. As the
intellect is man's best and noblest power, so is
intellectual virtue, absolutely speaking, the best virtue of
man.

10. The use of the speculative understanding is
discernible in many things to which even the common
crowd turn for happiness, as news of that which is
of little or no practical concern to self, sight-seeing,
theatre-going, novels, poetry, art, scenery, as well
as speculative science and high literature. A certain
speculative interest is mixed up with all practical
work: the mind lingers on the speculation apart
from the end in view.

11. The act of contemplation cannot be steadily carried
out, as is necessary to happiness, except in the midst of
easy surroundings. Human nature is not self-sufficient
for the work of contemplation. There is need of
health and vigour, and the means of maintaining it,
food, warmth, interesting objects around you, leisure,
absence of distracting care or pain. None would
call a man happy upon the rack, except by way of
maintaining a thesis. The happiness of a disembodied
spirit is of course independent of bodily
conditions, but it would appear that there are
conditions of environment requisite for even a spirit's
contemplation.

12. Happiness must endure to length of days.
Happiness is the perfect good of man. But no
good is perfect that will not last. One swallow
does not make a summer, nor does one fine day:
neither is man made blessed and happy by one day,
nor by a brief time. The human mind lighting upon
good soon asks the question, Will this last? If the
answer is negative, the good is not a complete good,
and there is no complete happiness coming of it.
If the answer is affirmative and false, once more
that is not a perfect happiness that rests on a
delusion. The supreme good of a rational being is
not found in a fool's paradise. We want an answer
affirmative and true: This happiness shall last.

13. We now sum up and formulate the definition
of happiness as follows: Happiness is a bringing of
the soul to act according to the habit of the best and most
perfect virtue, that is, the virtue of the speculative intellect,
borne out by easy surroundings, and enduring to
length of days -- energeia psuchês kat aretên
tên aristên kai teleiotatên en biô
teleiô. (Ar., Eth., I., vii., 15, 16.)

14. Man is made for society. His happiness
must be in society, a social happiness, no lonely
contemplation. He must be happy in the consciousness
of his own intellectual act, and happy in
the discernment of the good that is in those around
him, whom he loves. Friends and dear ones are
no small part of those easy surroundings that are the
condition of happiness.

15. Happiness -- final, perfect happiness -- is not
in fighting and struggling, in so far as a struggle
supposes evil present and imminent; nor in benevolence,
so far as that is founded upon misery
needing relief. We fight for the conquest and
suppression of evil; we are benevolent for the healing
of misery. But it will be happiness, in the
limit, as mathematicians speak, to wish well to all
in a society where it is well with all, and to struggle
with truth for its own sake, ever grasping, never
mastering, as Jacob wrestled with God.

Section III. -- Happiness open to man.

"And now as he looked and saw the whole
Hellespont covered with the vessels of his fleet, and
all the shore and every plain about Abydos as full as
possible of men, Xerxes congratulated himself on
his good fortune; but after a little while, he wept.
Then Artabanus, the King's uncle, when he heard
that Xerxes was in tears, went to him, and said:
'How different, sire, is what thou art now doing
from what thou didst a little while ago! Then
thou didst congratulate thyself; and now, behold
thou weepest.' 'There came upon me,' replied
he, 'a sudden pity, when I thought of the shortness
of man's life, and considered that of all this host,
so numerous as it is, not one will be alive when a
hundred years are gone by.' 'And yet there are
sadder things in life than that,' returned the other.
'Short as our time is, there is no man, whether it
be among this multitude or elsewhere, who is so
happy, as not to have felt the wish -- I will not say
once, but full many a time -- that he were dead
rather than alive. Calamities fall upon us,
sicknesses vex and harass us, and make life, short
though it be, to appear long. So death, through
the wretchedness of our life, is a most sweet refuge
to our race; and God, who gives us the tastes
that we enjoy of pleasant times, is seen, in his very
gift, to be envious.'" (Herodotus, vii., 45, 46.)

1. It needs no argument to show that happiness,
as defined in the last section, can never be
perfectly realized in this life. Aristotle took his
definition to represent an ideal to be approximated
to, not attained. He calls his sages "happy as
men" (Eth., I., x., 16), that is, imperfectly, as all
things human are imperfect. Has Aristotle, then,
said the last word on happiness? Is perfect happiness
out of the reach of the person whom in this
mortal life we call man? However that may be,
it is plain that man desires perfect happiness. Every
man desires that it may be perfectly well with him
and his, although many have mistaken notions of
what their own well-being consists in, and few can
define it philosophically. Still they all desire it.
The higher a man stands in intellect, the loftier and
vaster his conception of happiness, and the stronger
his yearning after it. This argues that the desire of
happiness is natural to man: not in the sense in
which eating and drinking are natural, as being
requirements of his animal nature, but in the same
way that it is natural to him to think and converse,
his rational nature so requiring. It is a natural desire,
as springing from that which is the specific characteristic
of human nature, distinguishing it from mere
animal nature, namely reason. It is a natural desire
in the best and highest sense of the word.

2. Contentment is not happiness. A man is
content with little, but it takes an immensity of
good to satisfy all his desire, and render him
perfectly happy. When we say we are content, we
signify that we should naturally desire more, but
acquiesce in our present portion, seeing that more
is not to be had. "Content," says Dr. Bain, "is
not the natural frame of any mind, but is the result
of compromise."

3. But is not this desire of unmixed happiness
unreasonable? Are we not taught to set bounds
to our desire? Is not moderation a virtue, and
Contentment wisdom? Yes, moderation is a virtue,
but it concerns only the use of means, not the
apprehension of ends. The patient, not to say the
physician, desires medicines in moderation, so much
as will do him good and no more; but, so far as his
end is health, he desires all possible health, perfect
health. The last end, then, is to be desired as a
thing to possess without end or measure, fully and
without defect.

4. We have then these facts to philosophise on
that all men desire perfect happiness: that this
desire is natural, springing from the rational soul
which sets man above the brute : that on earth man
may attain to Contentment, and to some happiness,
but not to perfect happiness: that consequently
nature has planted in man a desire for which on
earth she has provided no adequate satisfaction.

5. If the course of events were fitful and wayward,
so that effects started up without causes, and
like causes under like conditions produced unlike
effects, and anything might come of anything, there
would be no such thing as that which we call nature.
When we speak of nature, we imply a regular and
definite flow of tendencies, this thing springing from
that and leading to that other; nothing from nothing,
and nothing leading nowhere; no random,
aimless proceedings; but definite results led up to
by a regular succession of steps, and surely ensuing
unless something occurs on the way to thwart the
process. How this is reconciled with Creation and
Freewill, it is not our province to enquire: suffice
it to say that a natural agent is opposed to a free
one, and creation is the starting-point of nature.
But to return. Everywhere we say, "this is for
that," wherever there appears an end and consummation
to which the process leads, provided it go
on unimpeded. Now every event that happens is a
part of some process or other. Every act is part of
a tendency. There are no loose facts in nature,
no things that happen, or are, otherwise than in
consequence of something that has happened, or
been, before, and in view of something else that is
to happen, or be, hereafter. The tendencies of
nature often run counter to one another, so that
the result to which this or that was tending is
frustrated. But a tendency is a tendency, although
defeated; this was for that, although that for which
it was has got perverted to something else. There
is no tendency which of itself fails and comes to
naught, apart from interference. Such a universal
and absolute break-down is unknown to nature.

6. All this appears most clearly in organic beings,
plants and animals. Organisms, except the very
lowest, are compounds of a number of different
parts, each fulfilling a special function for the good
of the whole. There is no idle constituent in an
organic body, none without its function. What
are called rudimentary organs, even if they serve no
purpose in the individual, have their use in the
species, or in some higher genus. In the animal
there is no idle natural craving, or appetite. True,
in the individual, whether plant or animal, there are
many potentialities frustrate and made void. That
is neither here nor there in philosophy. Philosophy
deals not with individuals but with species, not with
Bucephalus or Alexander, but with horse, man. It
is nothing to philosophy that of a thousand seeds
there germinate perhaps not ten. Enough that one
seed ever germinates, and that all normal specimens
are apt to do the like, meeting with proper
environment. That alone shows that seed is not
an idle product in this or that class of living beings.

7. But, it will be said, not everything contained
in an organism ministers to its good. There is
refuse material, only good to get rid of: there are
morbid growths; there is that tendency to decay,
by which sooner or later the organism will perish.
First, then, a word on diseases. Diseases are the
diseases of the individual; not of the race. The
race as such, and that is what the philosopher
studies, is healthy: all that can be imputed to the
race is liability to disease. That liability, and the
tendency to decay and die, are found in living
things, because their essence is of finite perfection;
there cannot be a plant or animal, that has not
these drawbacks in itself, as such. They represent,
not the work of nature, but the failure of nature,
and the point beyond which nature can no further
go.
8. On the preceding observations Aristotle formulated
the great maxim -- called by Dr. Thomas
Browne, Religio Medici, p. i., sect. 15, "the only
indisputable axiom in philosophy," -- Nature does
nothing in vain. (Ar., Pol., I., viii., 12; De Anima,
III., ix., 6; De part. animal., 1. i., p. 641, ed. Bekker.)

9. The desire of happiness, ample and complete,
beyond what this world can afford, is not planted in
man by defect of his nature, but by the perfection of his
nature, and in view of his further perfection. This
desire has not the character of a drawback, a thing
that cannot be helped, a weakness and decay of
nature, and loss of power, like that which sets in
with advancing years. A locomotive drawing a
train warms the air about it: it is a pity that it
should do so, for that radiation of heat is a loss of
power: but it cannot be helped, as locomotives are
and must be constructed. Not such is the desire
of perfect happiness in the human breast. It is
not a disease, for it is no peculiarity of individuals,
but a property of the race. It is not a decay, for
it grows with the growing mind, being feeblest
in childhood, when desires are simplest and most
easily satisfied, and strongest where mental life is
the most vigorous. It is an attribute of great
minds in proportion to their greatness. To be
Without it, would be to live a minor in point of
intellect, not much removed from imbecility. It
is not a waste of energy, rather it furnishes the
motive-power to all human volition. It comes of the
natural working of the understanding that discerns
good, and other good above that, and so still higher
and higher good without limit; and of the natural
working of the will, following up and fastening upon
what the understanding discerns as good. The
desire in question, then, is by no means a necessary
evil, or natural flaw, in the human constitution.

10. It follows that the desire of perfect happiness
is in man by the normal growth of his nature,
and for the better. But it would be a vain desire,
and objectless, if it were essentially incapable of
satisfaction: and man would be a made and
abiding piece of imperfection, if there were no
good accessible to his intellectual nature sufficient
to meet its proper exigence of perfect happiness.
But no such perfect happiness is attainable in this
world. Therefore there must be a world to come, in
which he who was man, now a disembodied spirit,
but still the same person, shall under due conditions
find a perfect good, the adequate object of his
natural desire. Else is the deepest craving of human
nature in vain, and man himself is vanity of vanities.

11. It may be objected that there is no need to
go beyond this world to explain how the desire of
perfect happiness is not in vain. It works like
the desire of the philosopher's stone among the
old alchemists. The thing they were in search of
was a chimera, but in looking for it they found a
real good, modern chemistry. In like manner, it is
contended, though perfect happiness is not to be
had anywhere, yet the desire of it keeps men from
sitting down on the path of progress; and thus
to that desire we owe all our modern civilization,
and all our hope and prospect of higher civilization
to come. Without questioning the alleged fact
about the alchemists, we may reply that modern
chemistry has dissipated the desire of the philosopher's
stone, but modern civilization has not dissipated
the desire of perfect happiness: it has deepened
it, and perhaps rather obscured the prospect of its
fulfilment. A desire that grows with progress certainly
cannot be satisfied by progressing. But if it
is never to be satisfied, what is it? A goad thrust
into the side of man, that shall keep him coursing
along from century to century, like Io under the
gadfly, only to find himself in the last century as far
from the mark as in the first. Apart from the hope
of the world to come, is the Italy of to-day happier
than the Italy of Antoninus Pius? Here is a modern
Italian's conclusion: "I have studied man, I have
examined nature, I have passed whole nights observing
the starry heavens. And what is the result
of these long investigations? Simply this, that the
life of man is nothing; that man himself is nothing;
that he will never penetrate the mystery which surrounds
the universe. With this comfortless conviction
I descend into the grave, and console myself
with the hope of speedy annihilation. The lamp
goes out; and nothing, nothing can rekindle it. So
Nature, I return to thee, to be united with thee for
ever. Never wilt thou have received into thy bosom
a more unhappy being." (La Nullit… della Vita. By
G.P., 1882.)

This is an extreme case, but much of modern
progress tends this way. Civilization is not happiness,
nor is the desire for happiness other than vain,
if it merely leads to increased civilization.

Section IV. -- Of the Object of Perfect Happiness.

1. As happiness is an act of the speculative intellect
contemplating (s. ii., n. 6, p. 9), so the thing thus
contemplated is the object of happiness. As happiness
is the subjective last end, so will this object, inasmuch
as the contemplation of it yields perfect happiness,
be the objective last end of man. (s. i., nn. 3, 4, p. 4.) As
perfect happiness is possible, and intended by nature,
so is this objective last end attainable, and should
be attained. But attained by man? Aye, there's
the rub. It cannot be attained in this life, and after
death man is no more: a soul out of the body is not
man. About the resurrection of the body philosophy
knows nothing. Nature can make out no title to
resurrection. That is a gratuitous gift of God in
Christ. When it takes effect, stupebit natura.
Philosophy deals only with the natural order, with man
as man, leaving the supernatural order, or the privileges
and status of man as a child of God, to the
higher science of Scholastic Theology. Had God
so willed it, there might have been no supernatural
at all. Philosophy shows the world as it would
have been on that hypothesis. In that case, then,
man would have been, as Aristotle represents him,
a being incapable of perfect happiness; but he who
is man could have become perfectly happy in a state
other than human, that is, as a disembodied spirit.
Peter is man: the soul of Peter, after separation, is
man no longer; but Peter is not one person, and
Peter's soul out of the body another person; there
is but one person there, with one personal history
and liabilities. The soul of Peter is Peter still:
therefore the person Peter, or he who is Peter, attains
to happiness, but not the man Peter, as man, apart
from the supernatural privilege of the resurrection.
Hence Aristotle well said, though he failed to see
the significance of his own saying, that man should
aim at a life of happiness too good for man. (s. ii.,
nn. 7, 8, p. 9.)

2. The object of happiness, -- the objective last
end of man, -- will be that which the soul contemplating
in the life to come will be perfectly happy
by so doing. The soul will contemplate all intellectual
beauty that she finds about her, all heights
of truth, all the expanse of goodness and mystery
of love. She will see herself: a vast and curious
sight is one pure spirit: but that will not be enough
for her, her eye travels beyond. She must be in
company, live with myriads of pure spirits like
herself, -- see them, study them, and admire them,
and converse with them in closest intimacy. Together
they must explore the secrets of all creation
even to the most distant star: they must read the
laws of the universe, which science laboriously spells
out here below: they must range from science to
art, and from facts to possibilities, till even their
pure intellect is baffled by the vast intricacy of
things that might be and are not: but yet they are
not satisfied. A point of convergency is wanted for
all these vistas of being, whence they may go forth,
and whither they may return and meet: otherwise
the soul is distracted and lost in a maze of
incoherent wandering, crying out, Whence all this?
and what is it for? and above all, whose is it?
These are the questions that the human mind asks
in her present condition: much more will she ask
them then, when wonders are multiplied before her
gaze: for it is the same soul there and here. Here
men are tormented in mind, if they find no answer
to these questions. Scientific men cannot leave
theology alone. They will not be happy there
without an answer. Their contemplation will still
desiderate something beyond all finite being, actual
or possible. Is that God? It is nothing else. But
God dwells in light inaccessible, where no creature,
as such, can come near Him nor see Him. The
beauties of creation, as so many streams of tendency,
meet at the foot of His Throne, and there are lost.
Their course is towards Him, and is, so far as it
goes, an indication of Him: but He is infinitely,
unspeakably above them. No intelligence created,
or creatable, can arrive by its own natural perception
to see Him as He is: for mind can only discern
what is proportionate to itself: and God is out of
proportion with all the being of all possible creatures.
It is only by analogy that the word being, or any
other word whatever can be applied to Him. As
Plato says, "the First Good is not Being, but over
and beyond Being in dignity and power." (Rep.
509, B.)

3. To see God face to face, which is called the
beatific vision, is not the natural destiny of man,
nor of any possible creature. Such happiness is not
the happiness of man, nor of angel, but of God
Himself, and of any creature whom He may deign
by an act of gratuitous condescension to invite to
sit as guest at His own royal, table. That God has
so invited men and angels, revelation informs us.
Scholastic theology enlarges upon that revelation,
but it is beyond philosophy. Like the resurrection
of the body, and much more even than that, the
Beatific Vision must be relegated to the realm of
the Supernatural.

4. But even in the natural order the object of
Perfect happiness is God. The natural and supernatural
have the same object, but differ in the mode
of attainment. By supernatural grace, bearing
perfect fruit, man sees God with the eyes of his
soul, as we see the faces of our friends on earth.
In perfect happiness of the natural order, creatures
alone are directly apprehended, or seen, and from
the creature is gathered the excellence of the unseen
God. The process is, an ascent, as described by
Plato, from the individual to the universal, and
from bodily to moral and intellectual beauty, till we
reach a Beauty eternal, immutable, absolute, substantial,
and self-existent, on which all other beauties
depend for their being, while it is independent of
them (Plato, Symposium, 210, 211.) Unless the
ascent be prosecuted thus far, the contemplation is
inadequate, the happiness incomplete. The mind
needs to travel to the beginning and end of things,
to the Alpha and Omega of all. The mind needs
to reach some perfect good: some object, which
though it is beyond the comprehension, is
nevertheless understood to be the very good of goods,
unalloyed with any admixture of defect or
imperfection. The mind needs an infinite object to
rest upon, though it cannot grasp that object
Positively in its infinity. If this is the case even
with the human mind, still wearing "this muddy
vesture of decay," how much more ardent the
longing, as how much keener the gaze, of the pure
spirit after Him who is the centre and rest of all
intellectual nature?

5. Creatures to contemplate and see God in, are
conditions and secondary objects of natural
happiness. They do not afford happiness finally of
themselves, but as manifesting God, even as a
mirror would be of little interest except for its
power of reflection.

6. In saying that God is the object of happiness,
we must remember that He is no cold, impersonal
Beauty, but a living and loving God, not indeed in
the order of nature our Father and Friend, but still
our kind Master and very good Lord, who speaks
to His servants from behind the clouds that hide
His face, and assures them of His abiding favour
and approving love. More than that, nature cannot
look for: such aspiration were unnatural, unreasonable,
mere madness: it is enough for the creature,
as a creature, in its highest estate to stand before
God, hearing His voice, but seeing not His countenance,
whom, without His free grace, none can
look upon and live.

Reading. -- St. Thos., ia 2ae, q. 2, art. 8.

Section V. -- Of the use of the present life.

1. Since perfect happiness is not to be had in
this mortal life, and is to be had hereafter; since
moreover man has free will and the control of his
own acts; it is evidently most important for man in
this life so to control and rule himself here as to
dispose himself for happiness there. Happiness
rests upon a habit of contemplation (s. ii., n. 9, p. 10),
rising to God. (s. iv., n. 4, p. 24.) But a habit, as will
be seen, is not formed except by frequent acts, and
may be marred and broken by contrary acts. It is,
then, important for man in this life so to act as to
acquire a habit of lifting his mind to God. There
are two things here, to lift the mind, and to lift it to
God. The mind is not lifted, if the man lives not
an intellectual life, but the life of a swine wallowing
in sensual indulgences; or a frivolous life, taking
the outside of things as they strike the senses, and
flitting from image to image thoughtlessly; or a
quarrelsome life, where reason is swallowed up in
anger and hatred. Again, however sublime the
speculation and however active the intellect, if God
is not constantly referred to, the mind is lifted
indeed, but not to God. It is wisdom, then, in
man during this life to look to God everywhere,
and ever to seek His face; to avoid idleness, anger,
intemperance, and pride of intellect. For the mind
will not soar to God when the heart is far from
Him.